Hope points. “See! She knows,” she says in approval.
My stomach roils. Of course Hope Adams would want to snag a professional athlete.
I can practically see her now. Adorned in designer clothes and shoes, a rock the size of a golf ball on her finger, and hanging on the arm of an NFL star.
“What about Benny?” I ask, referring to our high school quarterback, the boy who won my heart in high school. The same one I dated for more than a year before she stole him right out from under my nose our senior year, leaving me dateless for prom and heartbroken.
“Benny Black?” Hope waves me off with a little scoff like she has no idea why I’d bring him up. “No one’s mentionedhim in ages. He wasn’t going anywhere. Played second string for Pitt.” She scrunches her nose like she smells something bad. “Haven’t talked to him in more than two years.”
So she broke up with him shortly after the start of freshman year, likely because his superstar status on the field in high school didn’t translate to college. Brilliant.
“But lucky for me, I now have a friend with connections,” she says with a wink.
Like a moron, I point to my chest, like,Me?I’m completely shocked she considers us anything more than enemies after the shit she put me through in high school.
“Yes, you, silly.” She nudges my arm playfully like we’re long-lost friends. “I’m expecting an introduction now that I know who your friends are.”
“To who?” I choke out.
Her grin is reptilian as she says, “AAU’s kicker.”
“West?” Charlotte blurts out across from us, her eyes wide.
Hope nods, hazel eyes glittering. “He may not be the quarterback,” she says, eyeing Avery, “but he’s hot, available, and the word is, he’s the most wanted kicker in the league.”
My jaw goes slack. The twisted, cosmic joke of my high school nemesis targeting one of the men from my group of friends makes my blood curdle.
I try to picture Hope and West together—she in her yacht-worthy athleisure, him in graphic T-shirts and backward hats. His quiet, gentle demeanor, and her loud mouth. His social skills are roughly equivalent to a particularly friendly goldenretriever while hers are those of a coyote. It’s so incongruous my brain skips like a scratched CD. Hope wants West? My West?
Not that he’s mine. I’ve never so much as caught a whiff of romance from him, but he’s just . . . always there, his silent presence oddly strong and assuring. The idea of Hope and West together is like finding anchovies in your double chocolate ice cream—technically possible, but deeply, viscerally wrong.
“Our kicker?” I say, my voice three octaves higher than usual.
She nods and fans herself. “He’s in my bio II class, and that man’s face literally heats my ovaries.”
The shop’s bell tings again, and it’s like the universe is listening—or maybe toying with me—because West appears in the doorway, sunlight flaring behind him like the backdrop to a live action play I can’t look away from. He’s got that early morning rumple—T-shirt inside out, sweats slouched low over his hips, dark hair unkempt and in need of a trim, messy like he ran his hands through it on the way over—but it doesn’t matter, because the minute he steps inside he becomes the gravitational center of the café.
I’m not sure I’ve ever noticed the way every girl at every table does a double take in his presence, and I’m positive I see at least one barista go weak at the knees.
He doesn’t scan the room for us. He doesn’t have to. His gaze goes straight to the couches in the back—our usual spot—and his eyes hook on our group with a lopsided half smile.
Hope’s eyes widen—dilated, laser-focused, hungry. For a split second she’s not a girl at all, but a missilehoming in on its target, and I feel her intentions like static electricity crawling up my spine.
“Speak of the devil,” she purrs, clawing my forearm as if to keep me from running. “There’s your kicker, babe.” Then, not so quietly, “He’s even cuter before coffee.”
West starts toward us, stumbling slightly over his feet as he weaves past the crowded tables with more uncertainty than he ever shows on the field.
A bolt of pure, raw panic flickers in my chest. Maybe it’s the instinctual certainty that Hope is about to consume him like one of those predator documentaries, or maybe it’s the sudden, mortifying realization that I don’t actually want to watch her do it.
For three years, West has been background noise, a calming presence in our group, a rational, reliable source of warmth and occasional commentary and sage advice. He’s the type who’s easily overlooked but has your back at every event, party, or life crisis. I’d never thought of him as an option, but I know with complete and utter certainty I can’t let Hope have him.
I react on instinct, my feet moving before I can tell them to stop.
“West!” I shout, way too loud as I scramble over the armrest of the Java sofa and past a gaping Hope.
Immediately, I catch my big toe on the table leg, upend a stack of napkins, and lose my balance as I fly forward. He startles—because of course he does—but his hands are already up,catching me by the elbows before I can faceplant into his chest, or worse, the floor.
“Whoa, easy,” he says, voice amused and a little concerned.
